Marc Comtois
Former RI Auditor General Ernest Almonte says moving out of the state is, right now, about the only way that Rhode Islanders can avoid paying the $13,000 apiece we “owe” to fund public employee retirees (present and future). This is the big headline that came out of a conference held at URI last night. Also…
He inherited Iraq and Afghanistan and basically kept on the same path outlined by his predecessor. Then came Egypt. Then Libya. Now it’s getting bad in Syria: At least 90 people were reportedly killed and dozens were injured when Syrian security forces fired live bullets and teargas to disperse “Good Friday” protests in several cities,…
Hey, remember when gas was $2.20 a gallon and the unemployment rate was 4.4%? What happened with that? …Oh, right, the Democrats won the 2006 Congressional elections. That observation was made by Moe Lane and picked up by Glenn Reynolds. It’s worth promulgating because it’s a simple way to point out that what we were…
The Rhode Island supreme court decided that Toray Plastics and Polytop Corp. have standing (decision here) to challenge the Public Utility Commission’s approval for Deepwater Wind to build a wind farm off of Block Island. Michael McElroy, lawyer for the companies, explains (in the dead-tree version of this morning’s ProJo) why this is important: We’re…
Veronique de Rugy helps clarify income redistribution: Here are some other data points that I find interesting: Of the top 1 percent of income earners, only 23 percent are millionaires. A household income above $380,000 puts you in the top 1 percent of income earners. Of the top 10 percent of income earners, only 2…
It’s a travesty I tell ya! Staff in personnel departments are overwhelmingly female, typically single and aged 29 on average, the researchers found….The research, published by The Royal Economic Society, involved sending more than 5,300 CVs for 2,650 job vacancies. For each job, two applications were sent. One contained a photograph of an attractive man…
A milestone has been reached. One not seen since the Great Depression. Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010….that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times. Also, an estimated 59%…
The report on the Cicilline Adminstration’s fiscal inadequacies has dropped. The major findings, according to the ProJo: — “The Administration transferred funds from the Undesignated Surplus (Rainy-Day Fund) without approval of a majority vote of the City Council as required.” — “The Administration did not provide financial information on a timely basis to the independent…
There are (legitimate) concerns that student testing requirements will result in a “narrowing” of school curriculum. All math and ELA (and now a Science) and not much room for the humanities or arts. As Mark Schneider explains, the National Center for Education Statistics has released their High School Transcript Study and found that isn’t happening.…
No one likes to be though of as hard-hearted. But in an effort to find places to cut–to reduce our “obligations”–we simply need to take a closer look at our Human Services budget, which has $2.1 Billion (federal and state) in “assistance, grants and benefits” alone. Within that budget is the spending requested for the…